Proactive information delivery to support eating for older adults with mild and moderate dementia

Maintaining adequate nutrition for aging populations, especially those affected by dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease, is an increasing challenge requiring flexibility for different users and the capacity to adapt as the disease progress. Assistive technologies, such as Proactive Information Delivery (PID), represent a viable approach to assist older adults with dementia in maintaining proper eating practices by monitoring patient routines and context, then providing orientation and prompts that can guide the patient regarding eating related practices decisions. In this poster we present a theoretical overview of the applicability of PID to support persons with mild and moderate dementia with eating. We describe the problem space of eating with dementia, present the concept of PID, and review the literature that supports the applicability of PID to support older adults with mild and moderate dementia to eat properly. Finally, we present and discuss the challenges of adopting Proactive Information Delivery in this sensitive design space, and highlight additional research opportunities that should be further explored.